It is known that perfume compositions such as fragrance compounds and fragrances are adversely influenced by light, heat, air, etc., in respective stages such as production, distribution and storage and, therefore, suffer from various problems such as deterioration in quality of fragrance with the lapse of time and dissipation of fragrance itself. It is very important to solve these problems for well controlling a quality of fragrance of the perfume compositions. Owing to this reason, many studies have been carried out development of perfume compositions having a less change in fragrance quality with the lapse of time.
In order to solve these problems, it has been generally attempted to add or mix a stabilizer such as, for example, vitamin E, dibutyl hydroxyanisole (BHA) and dibutyl hydroxytoluene (BHT) in perfume-containing products. However, these stabilizers are likely to lose a stabilizing effect by reaction with the perfume itself or induce a change in fragrance of the perfume depending on a mixing amount thereof, or tend to fail to keep their stabilizing effect for a long period of time. Thus, it has been very difficult to suitably select kinds of stabilizers to be mixed and well control their mixing amounts, and there are therefore present only a very small number of stabilizers which are capable of exhibiting sufficient effects for keeping a quality of a perfume which are required for perfume-containing products.
2-Methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)propanal is a marine-based perfume extensively used in general perfumes and cosmetics such as, for example, perfumed waters, soaps, shampoos, rinses, detergents, cosmetics, sprays and aromatizing agents (for example, refer to Non-Patent Document 1).
As the method for producing the above compound, there are known the method in which the compound is produced from safrole obtained by purification of sassafras oil via heliotropin and then 2-methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)-2-propenal by finally subjecting 2-methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)-2-propenal to hydrogenation reaction (for example, refer to Patent Document 1), the method in which the compound is produced via 1-acetoxy-2-methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)-1-propene (for example, refer to Patent Documents 2 and 3), etc. In addition, Patent Documents 4 to 7 disclose the method for producing 2-methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)propanal from 1,2-methylenedioxybenzene as a starting material. However, these prior documents have failed to specify the method of keeping a quality of the compound.
Also, 2-methyl-3-(3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl)propanal produced by these conventional methods tends to suffer from yellow discoloration in air and, therefore, have such a problem that a perfume prepared from the compound is undesirably colored during production thereof. Further, if the compound used, for example, in living goods or products, is decomposed and deteriorated in quality such as purity and fragrance, the consumers might suffer from problems such as uncomfortable feeling.
Therefore, there is a demand for stabilizers capable of suppressing deterioration in quality of the compound as well as a method for suppressing undesirable coloration and decomposition thereof.    Non-Patent Document 1: Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2000, Vol. 39(17), p. 2980    Patent Document 1: U.S. Pat. No. 3,008,968    Patent Document 2: JP 57-45124A    Patent Document 3: JP 2006-104151A    Patent Document 4: JP 55-141437A    Patent Document 5: JP 2005-239619A    Patent Document 6: WO 2004/054997    Patent Document 7: WO 2006/120639